Field
The present application generally relates to dental prosthetics, and more particularly to user interfaces and associated technology for dental data planning.
Description of Related Technology
In recent years, dental prosthetic design has been accomplished increasingly using computer systems and 3D computer graphics or CAD (computer-aided design) software. These systems allow a dentist, dental technician, or other operator to design dental prosthetics for individual patients. These individual prosthetic designs are often called “situations,” “dental plans,” or “prosthetic plans.” The case designs that are made in the 3D or CAD software are typically based on the scans of the patient's teeth, gums, and bone structure as well as on a library of the teeth shapes and positions, available dental hardware, and system constraints. Once the dentist has loaded all of the relevant data for the patient, she can begin to refine the plan.
A problem with such 3D design systems is that they require a great deal of underlying dental data. This dental data may include 3D models built from scans of the preparations, gums, models or wax-ups, implant replicas, or other patient data as well as aspects of the desired prosthetic design or dental plan. The reason for the potentially large number of scans is that some software systems operate based on the relative locations of the bone, gum lines, example or desired prosthetic positions, and implant anchor locations. Limitations of the scanner, such as the scanning volume, can also increase the number of scans needed. Designing based on this patient-specific data is desirable in order to improve the dental plan. For example, desired symmetry with neighboring teeth and relative bite placement helps define the functional and aesthetic aspects of the dental plan.
Obtaining all of this patient-specific data can be time consuming and difficult to both plan and execute. It is not hard to imagine a dentist or dental technician who scans a number of aspects of patient-specific data, loads this data into the 3D or CAD software, begins to work on refining and manipulating the dental plan, and then realizes that she has not scanned in all the necessary aspects or components of the underlying patient-specific data. She may then have to return to the scanner and scan in the missing elements. Further, for many systems, the relative locations of the patient-specific data are important. Therefore, if you miss even a single scan, you may have to restart scanning all over again. For example, if designing the dental data plan would require a scan of the wax-up and multiple implant locations and the operator missed scanning a single implant location, then she may have to start the scanning process all over again because, even if she later scans the missing implant, the system can't determine that implant's location relative to the other scanned components. These issues can break up the design process and can cause great inefficiencies.
There may be a number of physical constraints on the individual aspects of the situation or case design. For example, certain materials may fail or otherwise be unavailable for a bridge framework that spans beyond a threshold number of teeth. In traditional systems, a dentist may design a case, situation, or dental plan and send it off to the manufacturer. If the case design, situation, or dental plan does not meet the manufacturer's specification, the manufacturer may flag it and inform the dentist or may build the situation even though it might fail. If the manufacturer constructs and sends the situation to the dentist, then the dentist may see it fail either in installation or use. These failures may result in much wasted time, effort, and money.
Dental technicians and other professionals may be presented with multiple, similar cases and design multiple, similar case designs or dental data plans. The case designs may all be for separate patients and the dental technician may design each one separately. The dental technician may, for example, design one case, perform the necessary scanning steps, and then start again with the next case. Designing each of these similar cases separately may prove inefficient because of the overlap of necessary types of scans and other aspects of the design process.
Another problem with traditional systems is that the techniques and knowledge about available dental hardware is kept separate from the techniques and knowledge of what is needed for dental data plans, and both are kept separate from the knowledge of what scanning is needed.
These problems and others are addressed by the systems, methods, and devices and computer-readable media described herein